The Zigzag Kid

by David Grossman

  We were still driving over back roads. I raised myself up on the seat and stuck my head out through the open top. I waved to an oncoming truck, and the driver waved back, staring at our big black car with admiration. Too bad I didn’t have a cowboy hat. That would really have completed the picture. I said so to Felix, who threw his head back and laughed. Again, for an instant, he looked ferocious to me, like a panther: an elderly one with droopy jowls, that still had a glint in his eyes, and I began to imitate his changing expressions, and the fierce blue of his flashing smile … or have I already mentioned my silly habit of trying on a person’s expression in order to feel it inside out? I can’t decide whether that means I have a flair for drama, or a flexible nature, but at any rate, Felix noticed it. He could see right through me. He sized up my character in a matter of seconds, and I didn’t mind a bit, because I saw by his smile how much he enjoyed my mimicry. He, too, was something of an actor, as was clear to me from his scene with the engineer, and I felt a special rapport with him, an instinctive warmth; what pros we’d shown ourselves to be in that locomotive, with me sensing what Felix wanted and improvising accordingly, and how about the way my arm started twitching, nice touch, huh?

  Felix stepped on the gas and winked at me conspiratorially. We knew—we both felt it—that this was the start of a special friendship between two adventurers, and he grabbed the toy gun from my hand, aimed it at the blue sky above us, shouted, “Hi-deh!” and pulled the trigger.

  The shot reverberated through the air. I was aghast. Suddenly I felt miserable and cold. A wispy trail of smoke rose up from the gun barrel. I slid back on the luxurious seat. All the air in my lungs escaped with a whistle, blowing out the fun of the adventure and the joy of our new friendship.

  “But you said … a toy …” I mumbled.

  Felix held the steering wheel with one hand and sniffed the gun barrel. He looked at me with his baby-blue eyes, shrugged his shoulders, and smiled. “So what you think, young Mr. Feuerberg—someone in toy department was playing michievous trick on me?”

  9

  We Fugitives from Justice

  Gunsmoke wafted over my head through the open roof of the Bugatti and up to the sky. I could smell it, scorched and heavy.

  “Maybe we should go home now, back to Jerusalem,” I whispered.

  There was a look of disappointment in Felix’s eyes. “Pardon” he said. “Forgive me, please, that I frighten you when I want just to make you laugh.” His triangular eyebrows peaked in distress. “I am perhaps too old to make children laugh, yes?”

  I said nothing. What a team we made: an old man who can’t make children laugh and a child who can’t make grownups laugh.

  Sulkily I asked whether he had any children.

  Again he hesitated, weighing the answer in his mind, as though there were no such thing in this world as “reality” or “truth” and you could give several different answers to any question, depending on what the person asking it had in mind at a given moment.

  Then he decided. The familiar smile spread over his face. “One child,” he answered, “grown up now. She could be your mother.”

  I said nothing, out of pure courtesy. I mean, really, how could anyone be my mother, except Gabi, that is.

  “I did not know her so well in childhood,” said Felix, “because I was traveling always, for work and such. This is great pity, no? So much I miss, no?”

  I didn’t feel like answering. The truth is, he didn’t strike me as capable of raising a child. He seemed more the type who could be nice and have fun with a kid for an hour or two. I was sure, for example, that he knew how to make shadow puppets with his fingers and do three or four simple magic tricks, or tell the kind of story that would grab a child’s attention. But actually to be there for the child, giving discipline and care and comfort, the way Gabi is for me—that’s something else again.

  “Why—why you looking at me like that?” stammered Felix with an awkward smile. I stared at him unswervingly, to let him see that I was angry.

  “I do love children …” he mumbled uneasily, apologetically. “Everyone says always—Felix is great hit with children! Children adore him …”

  Uh-huh. Just as I thought.

  Cruelly I held my tongue.

  “What’s this?” murmured Felix. “Cat has got our tongue, Mr. Feuerberg?”

  I could see that my silent scowl was troubling him, shaking his confidence. I had a feeling he could read my mind. Fine, then, I thought, go ahead, read on, here’s what I think of you, Mr. Felix: you are a vain and self-indulgent man who delights in raising himself as his only eternal child!

  It worked. Maybe it was mean of me, but that’s how I got even with him for the gun. Though I must confess, I am not the author of the wonderfully cutting line about the man who delights in raising himself as his only eternal child, et cetera. Gabi had said that once about her favorite actress, Lola Ciperola, and it was engraved in my mind forever. How strangely appropriate to Felix the words seemed now: his eyelids fluttered, his cheeks blushed red. He grasped the steering wheel with both hands and stared out the window, speechless.

  The silence lasted several seconds, and when Felix looked at me again, his eyes were utterly changed. Gone was the glint I had noticed in them earlier. I knew that something had passed between us, that we had fought a kind of duel, which I, for reasons unknown, had won.

  “You are clever boy, young Mr. Feuerberg,” said Felix quietly. “But now we see if you are brave enough to continue on journey.”

  So we drifted along in the big black car. I had to decide whether to say “Enough,” in which case it would be over, like some pleasantly confusing dream, an eerie dream which had just begun and would lead who knows where. I closed my eyes and tried to decide, but there were too many thoughts running around my head. In my heart lurked a nameless fear, a cold and heavy fear about what I was doing here with this Felix person, though I realized maybe I shouldn’t try too hard to get to the bottom of it, in case the solution turned out to be more frightening than the riddle itself.

  “Let’s continue,” I blurted.

  “Very well.” He sat upright behind the wheel. I could tell he was relieved, overjoyed in fact, that I was willing to continue our journey, despite what I had learned about him. I, too, sat up and looked him straight in the face. I was feeling rather proud of myself, though I didn’t fully understand what I had done to bring about this change both in him and in me.

  “But first we must to switch over to Beetle, yes?” he said.

  This was a surprising turn in the conversation. And in the trip. I asked no questions. I literally bit my tongue and waited to see what would happen. We parked the massive car near an orange grove. We got out. I didn’t know where I was, or where he was leading me. He opened the trunk and took out the brown leather suitcase. He closed the car door and began to walk away. I followed him into the orange grove. I was still forcing myself not to ask where we were going. With Felix, I now realized, there was no predicting. Everything could change from one minute to the next: situations, plans, the future …

  We stepped through the trees and into the orange grove. On and on we traipsed, past the muddy watering ditches. There were red rags tied around the tree trunks here and there. When I turned to look, I couldn’t see the Bugatti anymore. Or the road either. We were surrounded by the trees and the silence. Him and me.

  And then, between two rows of orange trees, I saw a huge frog: that is, a green Volkswagen, called a Beetle, though it looks more like a frog. I could hardly speak. I was amazed again at the magnitude of the operation they had planned, and yet one little thought kept nagging me: Couldn’t they have chosen a simpler present? Like maybe a regulation soccer ball? More and more I felt as if I were floating downstream. I followed Felix. He walked at a quick but easy pace. It was beneath his dignity to rush ahead. He moved to a special rhythm, which naturally infected me as well. He opened his door, I opened mine. He got into his side, I got into mine. He started the car. I
cleared my throat. We were silent. I liked that manly silence. The car went up and down the ditches, found the dirt road, and away we drove.

  “It was important for me to start our trip with black Bugatti,” he explained. “Special car gives style, no?”

  He pronounced the word “style” as though tasting something sweet. But what would happen to the luxurious car he had shipped all the way to Israel for a half-hour drive? He had left it just as he had left his expensive watch with the silver chain. He never even bothered to lock it. Apparently Felix was the richest man in the world.

  “But black is eye-catching, and with yellow doors, would take no more than few minutes for police to find it. This is why I arrange for us this Beetle car. There are so many in Israel, no one will notice. If we drive past police station, policemen will only tip their caps and say, ‘Good day, thank you, and shalom.’ ”

  I maintained my stern, professional silence. What Felix had said about the police began to sink in, and gradually, through the fog, an interesting thought occurred to me.

  “You mean we’re running away from someone?”

  “From police, I believe, who may not care for what we did on train,” said Felix with a shrug, clicking his tongue three times like a witness to police impropriety. “Sometimes they are old-fashioned this way.” And he added with a chuckle, “Not your father, of course, oh no no no!. Your father is true champion, but the rest are not. You listen to me, your father is best detective in all of Israel!”

  And then two things happened:

  1. My young soul positively crackled with joy that someone else thought as much of Dad as I did.

  2. I suddenly understood the true meaning of Dad’s plan.

  That is, I almost dared to understand it.

  “You mean, the two of us, you and I, are now …” I asked hesitantly, afraid of his answer, “fugi… fugitives from justice?”

  “Ah, this is lovely way to put it.” Felix smiled. “Yes, yes, we are fugitives from justice.” And he murmured the words to himself again.

  “What about … tomorrow? Will we also be … fugitives from justice then?”

  “And also day before yesterday … I mean day after tomorrow. It is up to you until when. What you wish is my command, like Aladdin and his jinni, yes sir!”

  And he gave a salute.

  Just then, the ringmaster of my inner circus raised his whip and I heard a deafening crack in my ears. The band struck up a lively march while inside me, thirty-two acrobats, three fire-eaters, two magicians, a knife thrower, clowns, monkeys, lions, elephants, and five Bengal tigers all leaped into the spotlight and circled round and round … Yes, it was one of those incredible moments when an entire circus runs away with a child, and the euphoric voice of the ringmaster resounded in my shell-like ears: Ladies and gentlemen, beloved audience, let’s hear it for me!

  I sank back in my seat and closed my eyes, hoping these shenanigans would drown out the cool warning whisper that tried to tell me I was wrong and that I didn’t understand what was going on, but I didn’t want to hear any more: Shut up, quit spoiling everything. Felix drove unhurriedly, humming a comical tune syncopated with little clicks of the tongue like a one-man band. I rolled down the window and let the breeze wash over my face. Very refreshing. I sat up straight again. There. That’s better. Everything will be all right now. Everything will return to being clear and simple. At last, after so much confusion and resentment toward Dad and Gabi, the whole plan was coming into focus, the angle, the method, and the audacity of it all: so this was my bar mitzvah present! And this was the man Dad had chosen for the role! Again I gasped at Dad’s ingeniousness. You’d never guess from his outward appearance who and what he is, and how brilliant he is when he wants to be. Sure he keeps a low profile when he’s out on a case; so low, in fact, Gabi claimed it was becoming his second nature, but even I hadn’t guessed he could be so bold and reckless. How I wished I could have heard what Gabi said when he told her his idea.

  She would never leave him now, not after an idea like that.

  I looked at Felix in a new light, too: for Dad to have entrusted him with such a mission, he had to be someone pretty special. The honorable Mr. Special, meanwhile, had put on a pair of simple black sunglasses, without a trace of monocular elegance. He drove with self-assurance, his eyes narrowing behind the shades, though I could tell he never missed a thing. More and more he reminded me of Dad. They were so different, yet so alike. I swallowed hard, trying to control what I would say from now on, but I could scarcely control the trembling of my fingers.

  Because what if this turned dangerous? Or even more unlawful?

  What if I disappointed both Dad and Felix?

  What if we were caught?

  The plan unfolded before me now in all its grandeur and absurdity: the risk Dad had taken! To let me do something that was clearly illegal, like the crime I’d committed on the train? Because if the police caught up with me and learned what really happened, Dad would lose his job, and his crooked partner would take over, and what would Dad have to live for without his work, without the force? “I won’t squeal,” I swore to myself. “Even if they torture me in the interrogation cellars, I will never betray him to the police!”

  No, no, I couldn’t imagine it. I didn’t dare. I took a deep breath. I got ready to ask a long question, to clarify things once and for all:

  “Wwwwhat wwwill…?”

  I gagged on the words. I sat there shamefaced. Felix smiled wanly.

  Nu, I told myself, go on!

  “And wwwhat wwwill … will we do together?”

  The pipsqueaky voice that hovered in the air was mine apparently.

  “Oi, Mr. Feuerberg,” said Felix, waving his hand. “You and I do things you never dream of!”

  “And … if they catch us?”

  “They will not catch us.”

  It was now or never. “Hey—uh—Felix … did they … I mean … the police, ever catch you?”

  He went on humming as though he hadn’t heard me. It was a while before he turned to me and answered: “One time, once and no more.”

  He smiled to himself, but only his lips were smiling now, and the cruel line I had seen over his mouth before stood out again.

  “How many years have you known my dad?”

  “Oho! Ten years, maybe!”

  I hesitated, carefully wording my next question to avoid insulting him. “You know each other—professionally?”

  Now the wrinkles around his eyes smiled, too. “Professionally. Yes, you put this very well.”

  He speeded up and concentrated on his driving, whistling a jolly tune. Now and then he would hum with glee. “Professionally!”—accompanying the word with a “pam pam—pam pam pam.” He was always whistling or humming, I noticed, filling the air with chirping or buzzing noises. Maybe this is what happens to grownups who were like me when they were young, I mused.

  But in spite of my uncertainty and confusion about him, I still got a good feeling whenever I looked at his hands. They were long and calm and manly. The only thing that bothered me was the ring, the big gold ring he wore which suggested a kind of flashiness and self-indulgence I had never met with before. The stone was black, black as a tunnel under a prison wall, shiny as a gun barrel, black and shiny as flashing dark secrets.

  So I kept my eyes on his right hand. It gave me courage and made me like him and want to stay with him. The right hand was the good hand. It kept me safe, and reminded me that Dad was watching over me from afar, that he had chosen Felix for this mission with the utmost care. A single glance at Felix’s right hand made you see that he was like the legendary Shushus who don’t know the meaning of fear. Or a criminal with a heart of gold.

  “Dad’s a champion, isn’t he?”

  “First-rate detective. Número uno!” he said.

  Too bad Dad wasn’t around to hear this. He’d lost so much confidence after falling out with his buddies on the force. None of the other detectives wanted to work with him anymore.
There was even an article about him in the morning paper, saying he had bungled every big case that came his way, and that his hatred of criminals made him charge into the most delicate investigations like a raging elephant. I was hoping Felix hadn’t read that paper.

  “Only, he’s been having some trouble recently,” I ventured.

  “Ach, it’s all goulash what they print in newspapers!” said Felix dismissively. “They do not see that your Mr. Father is no ordinary, run-of-mill detective! It is in his blood! He is not like others, office clerks in uniform! He is real maestro, he is among detectives like Bugatti among cars!” And for emphasis he raised a finger, the one with the ring, which no longer bothered me somehow.

  “But this one reporter,” I said embarrassedly, “wrote that whenever he has to deal with a criminal, he goes berserk and blows the case.”

  “Ach, they are crazy in head!” Felix was furious. “I also read what those stupidiots say! Do they think fighting crime is children’s game?”

  “And he hasn’t been promoted for such a long time,” I confided uneasily, knowing it was wrong of me to divulge a thing like that. We of the police are not supposed to hang our dirty linen out in public, but I was full of resentment at the way Dad had been treated, and I knew that Felix was on our side.

  “Is swinishness!” grumbled Felix, slapping the steering wheel. “They resent your father because he is fantastical!” he said, locking his mouth nearly up to his nose.

  I tried to remember his exact words so I’d be able to repeat them to Dad the following day. I only wished Gabi had heard, too. For some time now she’d been annoyingly critical of Dad’s work, and I couldn’t understand why he put up with her insulting remarks, like that he should quit the force and start looking for another job. She was blunt, all right.

  “Another job?” Dad’s jaw dropped. “This is me you’re talking to!”

  We were standing in the kitchen, the three of us, fixing supper just then. I froze in front of the frying pan. Dad was beginning to swell up over the macaroni pot. Gabi waited for an outburst from him, and when none seemed forthcoming, she worked up her courage: “Quit the job. Enough already!” Dead silence. Dad, amazingly enough, controlled his tongue! Gabi went on cutting the vegetables with a trembling hand. “You’ve given nearly twenty years of your life to the job, and a lot more than that. It’s high time you tried something different, something more normal, with regular hours. And no guns, no shooting, no risking your life day after day.” Here she glanced around. He still hadn’t opened his mouth. She took a deep breath and blurted, “I suggest that you retire early, with severance pay. I’ll retire with you; we’ll put our savings together and open a restaurant. Why not?”